Witnesses recount deadly Khomasdal club stabbing

TWO friends of a 17-year-old Windhoek resident who was killed in a stabbing outside a Khomasdal club on Workers’ Day in 2005 relived the incident that ended their friend’s life in the Windhoek Regional Court yesterday.

Close to a year after Marco Coetzee, the young man accused of killing Freddy Winston van Wyk (17) on May 1 2005, had pleaded not guilty to a murder charge before Regional Court Magistrate Sarel Jacobs, the Magistrate started hearing the first testimony in the trial.
Coetzee’s defence counsel, Jan Wessels, told the court after Coetzee (21) had pleaded not guilty to the charge on January 25 last year that Coetzee’s defence was that he had acted in self-defence when he carried out the stabbing while under attack from Van Wyk.
Both witnesses who testified yesterday disputed the claim that Van Wyk had been attacking Coetzee when he was stabbed.
The incident took place in the early morning hours outside a club in Khomasdal.
According to the first witness to testify in the trial, Jurgen Drodsky, he and some friends had been enjoying themselves in the club earlier that night. Between 04h00 and 04h30 they were outside the club, when a quarrel between Coetzee and Van Wyk broke out, he said.
He testified that he helped to separate the two arguing youngsters. After that, he was next to Van Wyk as the latter stood talking to Coetzee’s brother in a bid to sort out the earlier argument.
He told the court that Van Wyk was still talking to Coetzee’s brother when Coetzee suddenly emerged from behind his brother, stabbed Van Wyk, and disappeared back to where he had come from.
‘He stabbed me, he stabbed me,’ Van Wyk called out, he said.
Van Wyk was driven to a hospital, but they later heard that he had died.
Both Drodsky and the second witness, Denzil van Wyk, acknowledged that the group of friends had finished off two bottles of whiskey that night. Some of them had also been smoking dagga outside the club before the stabbing, they said.
Neither of the two witnesses could tell the court what the cause of the initial argument between Coetzee and Van Wyk had been.
Denzil van Wyk testified that during the conversation between Van Wyk and Coetzee’s brother, Coetzee approached them, but his brother warned him to keep away. A little while later Coetzee came from behind his brother’s back and attacked Van Wyk.
He said it at first appeared to him as if Coetzee had thrown a punch at Van Wyk, but as Coetzee then walked away, he put a hand into one of his trouser pockets and the witness heard Van Wyk crying out that he had been stabbed.
The trial is continuing today. Public Prosecutor Simba Nduna is presenting the State’s case.